The Lark's Lament: A Fools' Guild Mystery (7 page)

“Excellent, and welcome to Marseille, my peripatetic, peregrinate pelerins,” he called. “I’ll be down in a trice.”

We waited, watching the door for his entrance. We should have known better. He came hurtling out the window, arms outstretched, and before anyone could scream, he reached the end of the rope tied around his waist. He swung down to the ground, landing lightly just before the front wall of the house. Everyone cheered, and he bowed, then slid the rope down and stepped out of it.

“Nicely done,” I said, jumping down from the wain and helping the ladies. “A fool’s welcome if ever there was one.”

“Welcome again, my friends,” he said, then added under his breath, “and who the hell are you?”

I whistled a few notes softly, and his eyes narrowed for a moment. Then he whistled the countermelody back.

“I know you,” he said quietly. “You came back from Outremer with some silly minor king. End of ’92 or thereabouts. I don’t know the woman, though.”

“I’m Tan Pierre, Guildname of Theophilos,” I said. “My wife, Domna Gile, Guildname of Claudia.”

“Pantalan, Guildname of Artal,” he replied. “And the brats?”

“Our apprentice, Helga, and our daughter, Portia,” I said, waiting. Sure enough, he walked over to Helga and looked her up and down.

“Scrawny little thing like this thinks she can be a jester?” he sneered. “I’ve seen more meat on a diseased chicken. After it’s been plucked.”

“And I’ve seen better manners from a hog,” she replied. “After it’s been slopped.”

“Insult given, insult received,” he said, nodding. “Not bad, child. Well, a passel of fools to put up and provision. Just a quick visit, I hope?”

“We may be a few days here,” I said. “Something came up. You can keep us?”

“Two adults, a squalling infant, and a diseased chicken,” he sighed. “My love life is over, not to mention any hope of sleep. I’ll take your horse around to the stables.”

As he reached for the reins, all three of us shouted, “Look out!” He snatched his hand back just in time, the sound of Zeus’s colliding teeth echoing through the courtyard.

“Don’t tell me,” said Pantalan. “The legendary Zeus. I’ve heard some stories about the two of you, but even more about this vicious beast. I’m surprised he wasn’t eaten years ago.”

“He’s too tough and ornery to eat,” I said. “Like me. We get along.”

“Let’s take your things inside and you can bring him to the stables yourself,” said Pantalan.

The bottom room was filled with props and costumes, but there was a stack of pallets in one corner. We sent Helga with a brace of buckets to the cistern; then I took Zeus and the wain to the stables and paid for a week’s accommodation.

When I returned, Pantalan was sitting on a low stool with Portia bouncing happily on his lap.

“Looks like her mother, at least as far as I can tell under your whiteface,” he said. “Lucky for her.”

“It is,” I agreed as Claudia smiled at me. “Did you have that rope trick ready and waiting for us?”

“Oh, it’s there all the time,” he said. “You never know if a jealous husband or a spurned lover is going to barge in suddenly.”

“Does that happen a lot?” asked Helga.

“Well, I live in hope,” he said, grinning at her. “Come back for a visit when you’re older.”

“Looks like you could use a stronger rope,” I said, leaning forward and patting his ample belly. “Have we been neglecting our exercises?”

“The fool must reflect his environment,” he said serenely. “Marseille has grown fat and happy under my reign, and so have I. Now, am I to gather from your choice of password that you’ve come straight from Father Gerald?”

“With a few stops along the way,” I said. “I am to be the new Chief Fool in Toulouse.”

“My blessings upon you. It’s that way,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the west. “Leave in the morning, and you’ll be there in a week or two.”

“Yes, well, we have one little task to take care of first,” I said. “Remember Folquet?”

“Of course,” he said. “We worked together for years, from when I came to when he left.”

“He may be in trouble,” I said, and I told him what we knew.

He whistled softly when I got to the murder. “Who was this Brother Pelfort?” he asked.

“Someone who got in the way,” I said. “The message was meant for Folquet. Any idea why someone would be looking for him?”

“A dozen years ago, I could give you a dozen reasons,” he said. “He was the Guild chief here, and things were very active then. How much were you aware of?”

“Very little,” I confessed. “I was just passing through.”

“And that was after things had settled down,” he said. “The real fun was when Barral died.”

“Who was he?” asked Helga.

“The Viscount of Marseille. The man in charge, if anyone could be said to be in charge then. Lovely fellow, and quite fond of entertainers, lucky for us. He got along equally well with the decaying gentry, the mercenaries, the merchants, and the common folk, and he was smart enough to leave the Church to its own devices, so they didn’t get in the way of anything. He had a wife, Adalaïs de Porcelet, who was considered the great beauty of the town.”

“I remember hearing about her. Folquet wrote about her in a couple of songs.”

“Yes, he called her Lady Pons. And Peire Vidal was another troubadour here back then—I’m sure you know his work. Absolutely besotted with the Viscountess, which got him in loads of trouble.”

“I never heard that story.”

“Oh, he was always mooning around, presenting her with one love song after another, sighing loudly whenever her name came up in conversation. God, it was embarrassing after a while. Anyhow, one day he waited for Barral to go off inspecting some vineyards somewhere, and slipped into her room while she was asleep. The word is, he started kissing and caressing her, and it was so dark that she mistook him for her husband.”

“At least, that’s what she told people after,” guessed Claudia.

“No, apparently she was quite upset when she realized who it was,” said Pantalan. “Screamed bloody murder, and went straight to her husband when he returned and demanded Vidal’s head on a platter. Barral was too fond of Vidal to do that, but our heroic colleague was too frightened to believe it and caught the next boat to Genoa.”

“Seems a prudent course to take.”

“Well, things went downhill after that,” continued Pantalan. “Adalaïs never forgave her husband for not smiting the troubadour, and he grew weary of her constant berating. So he divorces her and marries this younger woman, Marie de Montpellier.”

“Of course,” sighed Claudia.

“But he dies inside of a year, leaving her pregnant,” said Pantalan.

“Natural death?” I asked.

“As far as we could tell, and we looked into it,” said Pantalan. “Basically, he was no spring chicken, and he had a lusty new young wife, so we think that she just wore him out.”

“Served him right,” muttered Claudia.

“They say he died smiling,” said Pantalan.

She glared at him, and he chuckled.

“What did this have to do with Folquet?” I asked.

“Well, needless to say, with Barral dead, the succession was very much in question. No one wanted the young widow from Montpellier or her spawn to be running things, but that left everything up in the air. Marseille was ripe for taking over. Toulouse was always claiming it, Montpellier wanted to gain a toehold, and Aragon and Genoa were itching to send their navies in. The key to power was a cousin of Barral’s named Adalacie, who was the heiress to the family fortunes. This cad, Hughes de Baux, came on the gallop from Orange to woo and win her. After the wedding, it turns out that he was in league with King Alfonse of Aragon, who promptly shows up with his navy and asks everyone to bow down and give homage.”

He paused and looked at Portia, who had been listening to him raptly, straight in the eye.

“Only they didn’t,” he whispered to her, wagging his finger. “They wouldn’t let the big bad king and his nasty navy into the harbor. They raised the chain and barred him from sea and land.”

“And that was the Guild’s doing?” I asked.

“Folquet brought his fellow merchants together, and I raised the rabble,” he said proudly. “But Folquet realized that the town needed a leader to rally behind as they had with Barral. So, he came up with another Barral.”

“How did he do that?” asked Claudia.

“Because there was another Barral—his little brother, Roncelin. Only problem was he had gone monk years before and joined the Abbey of Saint-Victor. Folquet convinced his fellow merchants that Roncelin was the man for the job, and they got the mercenaries to join them. Unfortunately, the monks liked Roncelin at the abbey, liked him so much that when they saw the crowds coming across the harbor to storm the walls, they tried to make Roncelin their abbot so it would be harder for him to leave. But the Marseillese dragged him out and carried him in triumph to the Hôtel de Barral and installed him as the new viscount, with a wife thrown into the bargain. Barral’s widow was bought off, her pregnancy hushed up. Roncelin has been here ever since, and Aragon has stayed away.”

“So he’s now in charge?” I asked.

“Not in the least,” said Pantalan. “He’s a viscount who doesn’t count. Marseille is run by a consulat made up of merchants and gentry, backed up by the mercenaries, all for the great purpose of running the city profitably with as little outside interference as possible. Roncelin mopes in luxury. The Pope excommunicated him, and periodically threatens to impose an interdict on the entire city, but nobody cares as long as they can keep fleecing the pilgrims, coming and going.”

“Did this Roncelin know that Folquet was behind his being pulled out of his monastic life?” asked Claudia.

“Probably,” said Pantalan.

“And do you know why Folquet became a monk himself?”

“He never told me,” said Pantalan. “Just up and left without so much as a good-bye.”

“What are you thinking?” I asked Claudia.

“Roncelin is forced by Folquet to leave an abbey, then Folquet joins one,” she said. “It restores a balance, somehow.”

“I don’t see the connection,” said Pantalan. “Folquet didn’t join the Cistercians until three years after Roncelin was made Viscount.”

“I am thinking about the impact of being forced away from God to serve Mammon,” said Claudia. “To be deprived of His love and protection, to be excommunicated by the Pope himself, and to be held a prisoner in your own house. I could see Roncelin wishing to take revenge on the man who caused his sorrows.”

“But after all these years?” objected Pantalan.

“Resentments can grow over time,” said Claudia. “And revenges can take time to plan. God knows my husband and I have seen such in our own lives after years of quiet.”

“It’s a possibility,” I said. “Certainly a place to start. You have access to the Hôtel de Barral?”

“Of course,” he said huffily. “I have access to every house in Marseille.”

“Then you and I shall go there tomorrow,” I said.

“What about me?” exclaimed Claudia. “It was my idea.”

“It was,” I said. “But we have to split up. I need you to speak with Hélène’s brother to see what he knows.”

“Ah, the noble Julien,” said Pantalan. “He’s in the Ville-Basse near the Saint-Esprit hospital. He lives over his shop near the mercers’ wharf.”

“Why do you call him noble?” she asked.

“Because he’s a good man for a merchant,” replied Pantalan. “Visits his sister monthly ever since she was thrust into holy orders. There are plenty who abandon their relatives once that happens.”

Portia suddenly nestled against the fool’s chest, her eyes half-closed. He looked down at her in astonishment.

“I’ve become boring,” he whispered. “My conversation usually doesn’t have this effect until after the fourth cup.”

“Looks like he’s got your job, Helga,” I said.

Pantalan rocked the baby expertly back and forth until her eyelids completed their downward journey; then he placed her gently in her cradle. He looked at her and sighed. “I enjoyed that,” he said softly. “Never thought about having children.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because then I would have to grow up,” he said, smiling. “Good night, fellow fools. I will see you in the morning.”

*   *   *

We were up and doing our stretches in the courtyard when our host emerged, yawning and blinking in the midmorning sun. He watched us for a while.

“I remember that one,” he said as Helga stood on one leg and put her other foot behind her head.

“Could you ever do it?” she asked.

“When I was thirteen, after four years at the Guildhall,” he said. “Two decades and many meals ago.”

He bent over, scraped the tips of his fingers against his toes one time, straightened, and rolled his head from side to side. Then he shrugged his shoulders until they cracked. “Ready,” he announced.

I collected my gear, planted kisses on various noses and lips, and joined him.

“The Hôtel de Barral is in the Ville Prévôtale,” he said as we emerged from the courtyard and headed west. “That’s the part of the city the nobles reserved for themselves in the partitioning. They have their own wharves and one fortified château after another. The Barrals have their place near the prison, appropriately enough.”

“And they are free to receive visitors?”

“They are free to do what they want and go where they want,” he said. “Just so long as guards from the Viguerie are with them at all times. If Roncelin takes one step toward his old abbey, they will gently escort him back to the château and remind him of his limitations.”

“What’s the wife like?”

“Her name’s Eudiarde. She’s from Aragon, related to the current king in some way. They threw her in as a sop to Alfonse, just so he thought he had some sway here, and they thought she was pretty enough to make a monk forswear his vows, as if that’s ever a problem.”

“So they make a happy couple?”

“About as far from it as I have ever seen,” he said. “And I’ve seen plenty of unhappy marriages. Present company emphatically excluded, of course. How do you two do so well?”

“We get to throw dangerous objects at each other daily,” I said. “It builds trust.”

He snorted, and we walked along. This part of the city was up high, giving us a good view of the harbor, which was busy. Ahead was the sea, dotted with fishing boats returning with their catch. It was a pleasant sight, and Pantalan was humming, which might normally have fit in with the day, but it was a sad melody.